


Routine

by DarylDixonGrimes



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Rickyl, Spooning, actually not smut, maybe a just in case TW for ptsd?, wow go figure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 22:45:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4497588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarylDixonGrimes/pseuds/DarylDixonGrimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've seen a lot of horrors since the world ended, and now that they have Alexandria and a place to rest and process, their minds are sifting through them all. Rick's processing happens at night, with nightmares and screaming loud enough to wake the whole house. But Daryl knows how to deal with it and bring him back to reality. Then again, he's always known what Rick needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Routine

It's weird how Alexandria changes all of them. It's like being on the road made it hard to fully process the world around them, but as soon as they're inside the walls, they have no choice. They have to deal with each death, each memory of horror upon horror, each one greater than the last.

It seems to hit Rick the worst. Or maybe it just seems that way to Daryl since his unraveling affects all of them so much more than anyone else's. 

Daryl wakes up in his bedroom in the middle of the night. He spends a second staring into the darkness before he realizes why he's awake. Rick is screaming in his sleep again.  
  
He peels himself out of the nest he's made on the floor, unable to stand the softness of his mattress after all this time on prison cots and forest floors, and then he heads upstairs. Halfway up, he hears Judith start crying. He nearly bumps into Michonne on the landing.  
  
“Got her,” she says, but she doesn't need to. Because they've done this routine for days now, and they know their jobs.   
  
Daryl enters Rick's bedroom without hesitation now, though no amount of repetition can make his heart hurt less when he sees him thrashing on his sheets.  
  
Crossing the hardwood floor, he grabs Rick's wrists and pins them down—another part of the routine, born from experience seeing as Daryl still has the shiner from the first time he tried to wake him up from whatever hell he goes to at night. 

“Rick,” Daryl says, his mouth right next to his ear. “Rick, it ain't real. Just dreams. Just bad memories.” 

Rick thrashes harder, whimpers, asks Shane 'why?' 

“Rick,” Daryl says again. “Come on back. Stop torturing yourself.”

Rick starts sobbing Lori's name. He apologizes. There's an incoherent string of words so strained that Daryl can feel the hurt behind them in his own chest, and he wishes like he does every night that he could have Rick's dreams instead.  

“Shoulda let you go,” Rick says before his words turn into a string of tortured, “No”s.  
  
“Rick. It's Daryl. You need to wake up now.”  
  
The man beneath him stills, and Daryl knows that means it's almost over. At least for tonight. He waits for Rick's eyelids to slide open, waits for the realization that he's not alone. Daryl feels Rick's arm twitch in his hands.  
  
"Let me go," Rick growls.  
  
“It's just me,” Daryl says.  
  
“Daryl?”

“Mhm.”

Rick blinks away the last remnants of sleep and relaxes. Daryl releases his hold on his wrists. There's a rustling of sheets and blankets as Rick untangles himself, and then he sits up, rubbing his face with his hand. 

Here's usually where it ends. Rick apologizes for waking everyone up, Daryl says it's okay, that it's normal. And then they all go back to bed.

“I'm sorry this keeps happening,” Rick says, right on cue. 

“It's alright. Lot of shit we ain't had time to deal with. All of us.” He gives Rick's shoulder a reassuring squeeze and waits for him to say good night, but this time he doesn't. Instead Rick reaches up and places his hand on Daryl's, curling his fingers around the side of it and holding it where it rests.  
  
“I'm just so tired,” he says. “Bad enough I had to watch all of them die the first time. Now I have to do it again and again.”

It takes Daryl a second to respond. This isn't part of the routine, after all. But it's Rick. He always knows what Rick needs in the end, and this is no exception.

“It'll stop,” he says. “Just got a lot to sort through in your head. But you will.”

Rick nods and squeezes his hand tighter.

“Guess I'll try to get back to sleep,” Daryl says. 

Rick is quiet, still holding his hand on his shoulder and staring down at his own bare feet like he hasn't even heard him. It goes on a second too long, and Daryl is just about to say something else when Rick finally shakes his head.  
  
“Stay.”  
  
“Sorry?” Daryl asks, because he's pretty sure he didn't hear that right.  
  
“Stay here. With me.”

“In Alexandria? Told you I ain't leavin. Don't like it, but-” But Rick's shaking his head again. 

“No. _Here_ ,” he says. He finally lets go of Daryl's hand and scoots over on the bed.   
  
Daryl looks down at the now bare expanse of mattress, probably still warm from Rick's body. He wonders what it will mean if he lays down there. He wonders if it'll be just like when he tried to sleep in his own bed, if it'll be uncomfortable and if he'll just wind up on the floor again.  
  
He looks at Rick, his blue eyes watching him and waiting patiently, like he just knows that Daryl has to think about it first and sort through his doubts.  
  
Daryl finally nods and crawls onto the bed, laying on his back stiff as a board. Next to him, he feels Rick laying back down too, the mattress shifting with his weight. He stares up at the ceiling, watching the other man get comfortable out of the corner of his eye. He doesn't look over at him even though he wants to, if only to know what this all means. 

They settle, and after a few minutes, Daryl can feel the heat radiating from Rick's skin, and he knows they must be millimeters away from touching. He thinks about moving his arm, about closing the gap and pretending it was an accident. But instead he rolls over onto his side, putting his back to the other man.

They settle again. 

But Daryl can't sleep. And he knows from the sound of Rick's breathing that he's awake too. He lays there and makes shapes out of every pattern in the wood grain on the floor.

“Do you know what else I'm tired of?” Rick finally asks. “Besides everything.” With his words, Daryl loses the vague face of a tiger in one of the knots. 

“Hmm?”

“Pretending.” 

Daryl hears the sheets rustling again, hears Rick shifting behind him, and then without ceremony Rick slips his arm around his waist, burrowing his nose into the nape of Daryl's neck and pressing his knees into the backs of his own.   
  
They settle for the third time. There's silence broken only by the chaotic sound of thoughts in Daryl's head and his and Rick's breathing, the latter two things almost perfectly matched. He finds Rick's arm and covers it with his, lacing their fingers together over his now violently fluttering stomach.  
  
“Me too.”  
  
And he realizes that it was never the softness of his bed that was the problem. No... It was the absence of Rick after getting used to always having him nearby, and he sleeps just fine in the other man's arms.   
  
So fine that he doesn't hesitate to crawl into Rick's bed again the next night.  
  
The nightmares don't stop, not yet at least, but the routine changes.    
  


 


End file.
